The State of the Debate Restated

Two months after ‘Oumuamua was sighted, Leslie Kean and her colleagues broke the AATIP story in the New York Times, beginning a new era in public UFO discussion in America and the world. That was five years ago.

Since then, in several disclosures to Congress, the U.S. Government has admitted that there is indeed something to some subset of UFO sightings, the objects in question behave outside the parameters of normal understandings of physics, are seen not irregularly at sea, and that metamaterials from some UFO encounters are now being studied by Pentagon contractors.

Not admitted or publicly discussed by the government? The long history of UFOs since World War II; the many documents revealed that show serious, top-level concern over the issue by the Army, Air Force, and CIA (including the infamous Twining Memo); the weirdness of the Moon and the alarming accounts of deep sea “USO” (unidentified submersibles) activity or many even stranger reports and issues; or any attempt to disambiguate between official denials and covert hoaxery by government operations.

As for ‘Oumuamua itself, a well-known Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, has declared that the object is likely a bit technology from a stellar system outside our Sol’s orbit, and has written a book about it . . . which I’ve not read. 

I know little about all this, really. But I have tried to suspend my sense of shame at the subject. (If you don’t believe that intellectuals have been the target of a huge shaming psy-op regarding the subject, you haven’t been paying attention.) And I have gone on to repeatedly insist that this is a huge story — arguably the greatest of our time — and that we need to unclog our minds regarding it.

Twenty years ago, despite many multiple-witness sightings from the “foo fighters” to the Belgian Wave to the Phoenix Lights, it was easy for me and my Debunkers’ Brigade to dismiss the subject as disreputable.

Now it is clearly disreputable to dismiss the subject.

Also, it seems to me, yammering about topics like the ”Fermi Paradox” without addressing UFOs is witless as well as grand examples of pathetic insularity in action.

That being said, I am by no means committed to the ET Hypothesis as an explanation for all or most or even some of these publicly unexplained sightings and their surrounding corona of lore. One need not lurch from knee-jerk debunking to credulity. Now more than ever we need to combine curiosity with a doubters’ discipline.

twv